Garumpf! Indeed.
Sal's mother is not nearly as upset as you would expect when she finds a bear in place of her daughter. Isn't she worried that her daughter has encountered a bear, and is possibly mauled? Nope. She just complacently looks for her.
Bear cubs and human children are similar. They both wander off and like to eat blueberries.
More like, "Underneath spaghetti."
So he disobeys her, but she doesn't punish him cruelly for it. His "crime" doesn't deserve death. The only person he really wronged in this case is Strega Nona, because it was her pot.
Don't be vindictive. Or, don't take things without permission.
I wish this fairy tale would never be heard from again.
How she planned on keeping up this charade isn't discussed. Sure, the king happens to stop at three rooms full of gold for unknown reasons, but what if he had continued? What horrible things would the miller's daughter be forced to trade away?
Life sucks unless you're the one in charge (especially if you're a woman). Good luck, you'll need it to escape the capricious whims of the powerful.
Will you walk a little faster?" Said a whiting to a snail. "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
Like the spider says, it's not a twist ending. Nowadays, we don't expect the endings of kids' stories to be quite as dark. Evil wins. One of the main characters is devoured by the other. In retrospect, horror is an obvious motif.
Beware of people who try to flatter you to trick you into doing things.
Well, they're creeping, so I guess the title is accurate.
I'm honestly not sure what this book is trying to say. Maybe it's just trying to be a "scary" book without being a scary book. Like, funny-scary? It's just that the premise falls apart if you think about it for more than five minutes.
Don't eat carrots. Or, if you think you're being stalked by sentient vegetables, you probably are.
You're a nice person. Here, have a prince.
Why does nobody else tell Mufaro, "Hey, Manyara is a jerk"? Or is she only a jerk to Nyasha? The summary says "Everyone--except Mufaro--knew that Manyara was selfish, bad-tempered, and spoiled." How does he not know? I guess she's clever enough to hide how much of a jerk she is.
Be kind, and you'll be rewarded.
These goblins and their weddings, amirite?
I really liked the relationship--the tenderness and compassion--from the older sister to the younger sister. Dealing with babies is hard. The mother's clearly mentally checked-out already.
Take responsibility for your actions.
Because when I think of goblins, I think of Hanukkah.
For all its talk about the power of the menorah, almost all the references to Hanukkah could really be swapped out with any kind of magical system and the story would be basically the same. When I teach my children about Hanukkah, I'll use a different method, because I prefer to stick to the facts of a culture. If this was like a traditional Jewish folktale, that might be different.
Goblins are easy to fool. Or, Hanukkah is totally awesome.
Not sure how this book kicked off a series. Not enough to read in 1939?
It's more annoying than anything else. It doesn't do anything for me. It's not imparting any knowledge to me. It's not interesting. It's just fairly mediocre, and the art is not very well done in my opinion.
Appendicitis is fun!
Who's in the what now?
The book seems like it would function as wish fulfillment for a child listener. When mommy says, "It's time to get out of the tub, we have to go eat," maybe the kid wonders, "Why can't we eat in the tub? If I was the boss, we would eat in the tub. You'd listen to me if I was the king."
Baths can be fun. Or, it would be awesome if you could do whatever you wanted to do, but eventually you probably should face up to reality.
